So, what do you do?

[fable]

Oddly enough I am as well, I just got my guard card and exposed firearm permit and have been working with a company for the last week.

Cool. We don't have weapons. They tell us we dont need them because our job isn't to get involved. It is to observe and report. Still a pretty nice job though..  Better than minimum wage and plenty of down time to read a book or something.

[TRAiN3R]

Cool. We don't have weapons. They tell us we dont need them because our job isn't to get involved. It is to observe and report. Still a pretty nice job though..  Better than minimum wage and plenty of down time to read a book or something.

The company I work for has 2 different guards, Unarmed and Armed, unarmed starts off at $11/hr and then armed starts off at $15/hr. It all depends on what you're guarding. Take for example armored trucks or banks. Even the local Applebees on weekends has hired my company for an armed guard. Its nice being able to carry a Glock .40 on my hip It's interesting to know that I'm not the only security guard on the forum!

[Xires]

I think this is a pretty cool topic but what I'm personally interested is not just what people are currently doing but what people WANT to do.  What're you aiming for?

Current job: Security Systems Engineer for a network security company
I code things like Detection Prevention Modules, packet loggers, network security scanners, traffic statistics generators, firewall automation drivers, dynamic host intrusion prevention systems, etc.

Previous job: Director of Security(hehe, DoS) & Level 3 Grid Engineer at a cloud hosting company
I designed security protocols, did audits, cleaned up after the messes of stupid people who thought 777 was good perms for their shared hosting server, created software & modules for use with the grid & cloud technologies we were using, etc.

Always: Technical Contractor & Independent Instructor
I do odd jobs for different people & their companies.  Typically things that they can't find someone else to do without spending a great deal of money or things that others have told them is 'impossible'(like building an OS for embedded equipment that you don't have access to in under 72 hours).  I also teach/tutor on various subjects including programming, system administration, security, etc.

Dream job: Teaching
I enjoy teaching a great deal and eventually hope to finish degrees necessary to teach software engineering at a college level.

[techb]

Dream job:
Electrical engineer. I would love to get into a prototyping position for embedded devices like cell phones, or even better, kid toys. I would also love to do career programming for a company, as in my actual job title of being a software engineer not just freelance stuff.


I wouldn't mind teaching robotics or coding. I've thought about approaching something like the boy scouts and see if they would let me teach the kids.

(like building an OS for embedded equipment that you don't have access to in under 72 hours)

+1 For what equipment/architecture?

[namespace7]

Dream Job: penetration testing (on contracts, for different companies).
It can be a hard job, but I would love to get payed for doing pen testing. If not pen testing, then I would also like to work as a network/security admin at some rather sensitive company.

[Xires]

Dream job:
Electrical engineer. I would love to get into a prototyping position for embedded devices like cell phones, or even better, kid toys. I would also love to do career programming for a company, as in my actual job title of being a software engineer not just freelance stuff.

Awesome.

I wouldn't mind teaching robotics or coding. I've thought about approaching something like the boy scouts and see if they would let me teach the kids.

Even more awesome.

+1 For what equipment/architecture?

PC Engines WRAP.2C - x86, MMX-compatible AMD Geode(though, at the time, it was still National Semiconductor's processor).  The storage medium was a 64 MB CF card.  I was able to build the entire system to fit within 12 MBs so I created a filesystem image that was 'partitioned'(that was a bit of a PITA to do) 3 ways; 24 MBs for /, 32 MBs for /mnt(where backups were to be stored) and 8 MBs for SWAP.  The wireless card was an Atheros model that I can't recall, currently.  Figuring out how to set up the boot structure for equipment that I didn't have was probably the most troubling part.  It took me some time but I was still able to make delivery an hour early.

The purpose of the device was to make it cheap & easy to set up 'free' public wifi access for small businesses which would increase their sales and more or less advertise itself.  Any purchasing customer would receive a little code(usually found on a receipt) that could be used as a key to allow them access to the wifi for an appropriate period of time.  This was one of the original reasons for quickly writing ncrypt.  A default firewall rule on the device prevented people from connecting to outside sources.  When a valid code was submitted on a captcha that ran on the device's internal webserver, the form-handling CGI(coded in C) would trigger another process to add the user's connection to the firewall ahead of the default rule.  This effectively let them skip the default deny rule and therefore access the Internet.  When the timer triggered, the rule would 'expire' and be removed from the firewall.  The timer was set depending on the code that was entered.  This way the place of business could specify that, say, an hour could be provided for someone who just bought a coffee and 4 hours for someone who purchased dinner.  The dollar amount was used as a seed and a timestamp(at millisecond resolution) would be used as the key.  The resulting hash(no, it wasn't a common one like MD5 or SHA1) could be checked against a generated table to determine how much time the customer had just purchased.

I did, eventually, receive a device of my own for further development & testing.  It now sits in a dremeled used Super SNES game box.  It's pretty hacktastic.

[fable]

To be honest, I am probably the least goal oriented person I know. But if someone told me to pick what I wanted to do for the rest of my life right at this very moment, I'd say being a security guard for sure. Although, being armed would be better. lol.

The company I work for has 2 different guards, Unarmed and Armed, unarmed starts off at $11/hr and then armed starts off at $15/hr.

What company do you work for and where? $15 an hour sounds terrific! heck even the $11 is better than my $9 an hour.




And techb, loving that new avatar.